Vatican autocracy and the U.S. bishops
As the U.S. bishops gathered in Baltimore on the weekend of Nov. 10-11, it seemed certain that, after a day of prayer, penance, and reflection on the Church’s sexual abuse […]
perspective
perspective
A century after the Armistice
I’m just old enough to remember when my elders still called November 11 “Armistice Day:” the armistice in question that which stopped the shooting in the Great War. As a […]
perspective
Roots of Catholic anger
After a month out of the country, working in Rome at Synod-2018 and helping mark the 40th anniversary of John Paul II’s election at events in Brussels and Warsaw, I […]
perspective
Shifting tectonic plates in Eastern Christianity
ROME. While Synod-2018 was trying to grasp the polyhedron-like character of “synodality” and wrestling with the differences among sexual inclination, sexual orientation, and sexual attraction, tectonic plates were shifting beneath […]
perspective
A public Church, not a partisan Church
WARSAW. The temptation to ally the Church with a particular political party and its program is a perennial one, it seems. When that temptation is not resisted, it invariably leads […]
perspective
John Paul II, youth minister
Pole that he was, Karol Wojtyla had a well-developed sense of historical irony. So from his present position in the Communion of Saints, he might be struck by the ironic […]
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perspective
The Catholic crisis, in perspective
Perspective is at least as important when reading the signs of the times as it is in landscape painting. And so, in this autumn of our Catholic discontent, I was […]
perspective
Courage in the Slough of Despond
I never took a class from historian Frank Orlando, but the motto he placed in the faculty section of my college yearbook — “History is an antidote for despair” —has […]
perspective
An Orthodox fracture with serious consequences
While Catholicism has been embroiled in a crisis of sexual abuse and episcopal malfeasance reaching to the highest levels of the Church, Eastern Orthodoxy may be on the verge of […]
perspective
Maintenance vs. mission
Just when the Long Lent of 2002 was coming to a boil in March of that year, Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy, took […]
perspective
Saving Synod-2018 from itself
Anyone looking for a remedy for insomnia might try working through the Instrumentum Laboris, or “working document,” for the XV Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, to be […]
perspective
Full-immersion Catholicism
As this Catholic annus horibilis continues to unfold, perhaps some good news is in order; first, a little background. In late 1991, Italy’s Rocco Buttiglione and America’s Michael Novak had […]
